Chapter 7, The Enemy Within (Pt 2)

Have you ever wondered why you can watch all 9 Friday the 13th movies in one sitting (something 4 friends and I did in high school--what a colossal waste of time on awful trash!), but get instantly tired when it's time to pray? Or, you can focus like a laser beam while you track down the enemy in Halo 2 on the Xbox, but suffer from sudden onset ADHD when you sit down to read your Bible?

The reason why this happens to you & me has to do with my next question.

Have you ever tried to kill a bug that knew it was going to die? In high school we had to catch bugs and mount them on cardboard. I don't know if the bugs knew they were going to die when I put them in the "death jar" (a mayonnaise jar filled with cotton balls that were dipped in nail polish remover), but they squirmed and buzzed and writhed and thrashed about until the fumes overtook them.

The reason it's so hard to pray and read your Bible is because when you do them your flesh dies. As a result, it "resists with its last breath anything that smacks of communion with God, because [your sinful flesh] suffocates in his presence. If you draw close to God...prepare to see the flesh scratch and claw like a wounded badger" (73).

That scratching and clawing is the inability to stay awake and the inability to focus and the sudden need to clean your hairbrush or mop the kitchen floor. This is part of the war against yourself, your enemy within.

So, now that you know what it is and one of the many ways it works, it should be a little easier to fight and beat it. I know when I sit down to read my Bible, I expect to get tired, I expect to begin to read with the motive of filling my head with facts rather than filling my heart with Christ, I expect to get tired when I kneel or lay down to pray so I pray while journaling, or pray while walking, or pray standing up. What do you do?